Page 16

Although the road to Cork was pretty, flanked as it was by emerald-green fields and many orchards with cows or pigs grazing beneath the trees, it was disappointing that there were no further shops.

In Hampstead there would always be a post office or grocer’s, often a baker too, well away from the main shopping areas.

As a child in the East End, there was a shop on nearly every street corner.

But Kathleen had told her most people lived on a very basic diet of potatoes, cabbage and bacon, and if they could get some other meat they’d cut it up fine with any vegetables they could get to make a big pot of soup or stew that would last all week.

As Beth walked on, she felt she didn’t belong in Ireland at all, a country where the poor far outnumbered the affluent and were ruled with a rod of iron by the Church and the mainly English landowners.

Yet in England there was the possibility of rising through hard work, at least for those prepared to be subservient to the Mrs Bradleys of this world.

For Irishmen going to England to try and better their families back here, it wasn’t so simple.

Back-breaking work on the roads and railways, living in slum-like conditions in places like Camden Town, was all they could look forward to as they sent money home to their families.

And they were stigmatized, called Paddies, navvies, and worse.

She felt very uncomfortable with what she knew, especially as she’d gained her own comfortable life by deceit. She felt she must think of something she could do while she was here to help people.

She heard horses’ hoofs and the rattle of a gig behind her, but she couldn’t move over any further as the ditch beside the road was full of water.

The horse came so close to her she could smell it and feel the warmth of its breath, and suddenly she felt a blow to her shoulder and back which knocked her off her feet into the water-filled ditch.

It was coming to in cold water which made her aware she must’ve been knocked unconscious, if only for a short while.

The water was deep, so it was a miracle she wasn’t drowned, but when she tried to get to her feet and out of the ditch the pain in her shoulder prevented her.

The mud was sucking at her feet, and as she tried to turn to use her good arm, she couldn’t move her feet.

She put her elbow on the bank of the ditch and tried to lever herself up, but the pain was so intense she nearly blacked out.

Worse still, her feet appeared to be sinking further and further into the mud, and she was chilled to the bone by the cold water, which had soaked right through to her skin.

There was no point in yelling for help, she hadn’t seen anyone else walking on the road, and there had been few carts, gigs or bicycles passing her. The driver of the gig who hit her must have felt something– why didn’t he stop to check?

She removed the sodden red scarf from around her neck, and held it tightly to wave when the next person came along.

She waited and waited, growing colder and more frightened by the minute, and still no one passed.

Her wrist-watch had stopped when she fell in the ditch, but she guessed by now it was after five as it was fast growing dark, but surely someone returning from work would come past soon.

She waited and waited, but no further carts, bicycles or gigs came by.

The sun went down and suddenly it was dark.

She was so cold her teeth were chattering.

Again and again she tried to get out, but her feet were now imbedded in the mud.

Each time she put her arm on the bank to try and lever herself out, the pain was so excruciating she was afraid she’d black out, fall into the water and drown.

Dr Finn McMara was driving his gig home from seeing a couple of elderly patients in Dunmore, when he spotted something ahead at the side of the road.

He thought at first it was a parcel perhaps fallen from a cart or other vehicle.

But as he got closer he saw it was a person who, all but for their head and shoulders, was submerged in the ditch.

Closer still he realized by her long dark hair it was a woman, but she was face down on the ground, presumably unconscious.

Pulling up his horse, and ordering it to stay, he climbed down from the gig, taking a torch with him.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ he exclaimed on seeing a rip on the shoulder of her coat, and blood flowing from it.

He knew immediately she’d been knocked off the road by some sort of vehicle, and almost certainly a gig very like his own.

He took off his coat, got a blanket from the gig and laid it down, lifted the woman’s head onto it, then knelt down to examine her. He was surprised that she was young, he guessed under thirty. Her pulse was weak but she was still alive, though icy cold.

‘Let’s get you out of there,’ he said. Her eyes flickered as he put one hand under each of her arms and began to pull her up.

He felt resistance and knew her feet were stuck in the mud.

‘I’ll have you out in a few minutes. I am a doctor,’ he assured her, knowing that the pain of pulling at her was likely to distress her further.

There was a low moan from her, and a squelching sound of her feet coming out of the mud.

But she’d been deeply stuck, and it took all his strength to get her up, haul her onto the blanket and wrap her up in it.

He saw the mud was right up to her knees, and he needed to get her into the warm quickly.

‘Can you tell me your name or where you’ve come from?’ he asked, rubbing her face with a corner of the blanket to bring her round.

‘Dunmore,’ she said weakly.

He guessed immediately this was the much-talked-about god-daughter of Miranda Falcon who had inherited Clancy’s Cottage.

Nothing happened in these parts without everyone knowing, and he’d been Miss Falcon’s doctor for the last five years of her life.

News had reached him almost as soon as her heir set foot in Dunmore.

There had already been bets laid by the more travelled people that she’d soon leave because no young unmarried woman from London would be able to adjust to living in such a quiet place.

‘Let’s get you home,’ he said, and he lifted her into his arms and onto the gig seat. She squealed with pain as he did so, but he told her he would soon get her warm, and her wound dressed. Supporting her with one arm, he managed to turn the gig around to go back towards Dunmore.

When Finn McMara arrived in Waterford, he was thirty-five, married with two boys, John Joe aged seven, and Michael aged five.

He had been in general practice in Dublin until his widowed father retired six years earlier, and he’d come home to take over the practice in Waterford and keep an eye on his father, who was not in the best of health.

His wife Lily hadn’t wanted to leave Dublin, and certainly not to live in the large, draughty family house, with the surgery downstairs. Neither was she thrilled, when she found she was pregnant again, to have a third child so far away from her family and friends.

But Finn had promised her that it was a mere temporary measure.

He would find another doctor to take over the practice as soon as possible.

He meant, but couldn’t bring himself to say, that that would be when his father died.

But his father had died eighteen months ago, and with all the talk of war coming, he had not made any attempt yet to sell the house and practice.

Their boys were thirteen and eleven now, their daughter, Ilsa, five, and they were happy and safe here.

The boys certainly didn’t want to go back to Dublin.

Lily felt this part of Ireland was too backward, she had no friends or family here, and though she and Finn were often invited to the houses of the local landowners, a barrister, the chief of police and a couple of teachers, Lily found them all terribly provincial, and their wives eye-wateringly dull– but of course they hadn’t lived and worked in London as she had.

Lily had in fact been a model for a fashion house before she married Finn, and had graced the pages of many women’s magazines.

In Dublin people found that fascinating and were bowled over too by her long flame-red curly hair, emerald green eyes, beautiful oval face and haughty manner.

Down in Waterford and Dunmore, a former model was practically a fallen woman– and she was a Protestant too.

Finn drove the gig at a gentle pace so as not to jar his patient’s shoulder. He glanced sideways at her pale, almost luminous complexion and her dark-brown, lustrous hair, and wondered about her.

He had found Miranda Falcon to be mean-spirited.

She had the wherewithal to help others even if it was only a few new books for the school, some food parcels for those in need, to knit a warm jumper or two for children or give some money to local charities.

But she had never done this, and therefore he found it suspicious that she’d left her entire estate to a young woman she’d only met at her christening.

She once spoke to him disparagingly of Honor.

‘We grew up together but she was unimaginative, dull and quite stupid. She married the first man who asked her, a timid little man who only joined up for the Great War because it was expected. Then, when he died soon after the child was born, she put him on a pedestal, and went on and on about him until she died. I can’t imagine the child has any spirit coming from such parents.

She writes the occasional letter to me, I think just to get on my good side.

But I will make her my heir, there is no one else.

I just wish I could remain a fly on the wall and witness what a disaster she makes of it.

She works in a dress shop– that won’t help her here. ’

Finn couldn’t imagine why anyone would be so nasty to a child they had sworn to protect in the sight of God. Couldn’t Miranda have helped earlier, suggesting college or some kind of training to give her a good start in life?

But it wasn’t any of his business after all.

His job was to get the girl warm, set that shoulder if necessary, and let her know that somebody cared about her, for he was pretty certain Miranda’s attitude to her neighbours meant that no one in Dunmore would make much of an effort to befriend her heir.